At least 13 killed as tornadoes, storms rip through Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas

At least 13 people were killed and dozens more injured as tornado-spawning thunderstorms rampaged across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas on Saturday.

Seven people died in Cooke County, Texas, including two children ages 2 and 5, authorities said. A tornado tore through a mobile home park in the county.

“It’s just a trail of debris left. The devastation is pretty severe,” Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told The Associated Press.

Dozens of people sheltered at a highway truck stop in the small town of Valley View as the storm rolled through the largely rural county north of Dallas near the Oklahoma state border. They escaped without injuries, Sappington said.

In Oklahoma, two people died in Mayes County, about 40 miles east of Tulsa, according to the county’s emergency management office. The details of their deaths were not reported.

And in northern Arkansas, one person was killed in Benton County and another person died in Boone County, officials said. Emergency crews were still responding to calls for help and authorities warned the death toll — up to four across the state — might rise.

“We are still on search and rescue right now,” Boone County communications director Melody Kwok told The Associated Press. “This is a very active situation.”

The storms covered a massive swath of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, with homes suffering damage as far south as the Dallas suburbs and as far north as Tulsa, a nearly 250-mile span. Cars and tractor-trailers were overturned, and mobile homes were upended.

As the storms moved east into Sunday afternoon nearly 200,000 people were without power across Missouri and Arkansas, while 180,000 homes and businesses were in the dark in Kentucky, according to Poweroutage.us.

The start of the Indianapolis 500 was delayed for hours due to the storms, and authorities ordered the evacuation of the massive Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

With News Wire Services